Saturday, February 25, 2012

PreambleThis blogspot exhibits many of my students outputs from a variety of workshops. There are one, two and five day workshops as well as workshops that have a different focus. Nevertheless, it always surprises me how much I learn from my students and how enthusiastic they are to learn and so for your convenience, I have listed the workshop posts below.

IntroductionUsing fewer steps than traditional screen printing, deconstructed and polychromatic screen printing offers the beginner as well as the experienced artist the same flexibility and spontaneity as paint to fabric or paper, with the added result of more than one image.

Polychromatic Printing (PP) is a combination of water color painting and screen printing developed by Joy Stocksdale. By painting directly onto a silk screen with concentrated dyes, the artist can achieve multi colored images, which can be printed on fabric or paper. Using release paste, one pull of the squeegee releases the dyes onto the substrate surface. A series of multiple prints can be obtained, which results in a limited edition of mono style prints with each print becoming a paler rendition of the prior print.

Known for her innovative approaches to dyeing and screen printing processes, Kerr Grabowski developed Deconstructed Screen Printing (DSP), a printing/monoprint technique, which allows for a freer, more painterly approach to screen printing. Printing with thickened dyes over low relief textured surfaces the dye is allowed to dry in the silk screen then printed onto fabric using release paste. The paste gradually dissolves the dried dye, which results in the image “deconstructing” as successive prints are created. No two prints are ever the same and the resultant distressed and disintegrating prints are rich in color, texture and pattern.

Claire Benn and Lesley Morgan have developed Breakdown Printing (BP). Similar to DSP, it varies in that much thicker quantities of dye are layered onto the back of the silk screen. Both low relief and heavily embossed textures can be impressed into the wet dye and left in the screen to dry.

All these techniques can be used individually or combined to create a rich array of complex color, marks, textures and layered imagery. The resulting fabric may be used as an individual work or a point of departure for further embellishment.

Two Day Workshop SynopsisThis workshop was organized by Marion Hera-Gorr of Beautiful Silks. It was held at Beautiful Silks at 101 Victoria Street, Fitzroy in Melbourne, Victoria from the 20th - 21stMarch 2010.

In this two day workshop titled, “In Pursuit of ArtCloth: Deconstructed & Polychromatic Screen Printing Introductory Course”, participants learnt to create texture and imagery using the resist properties of dried thickened dye on a silk screen creating successive deconstructed organic prints. In unison with deconstructed screen printing (DSP) they investigated the painterly and spontaneous imaging created using polychromatic printing (PP) techniques. As well as the DSP and PP techniques, they also explored and worked on a “breakdown” printed series of images creating lush colors and exciting textures.

Information OverloadThe right side of the brain is often associated with emotion and creativity, whereas the left side of the brain is associated with language[1]. Nonetheless, latest research on the brain's plasticity shows that these divisions may be too simplistic: different parts of the brain in the different hemispheres will coordinate in order to complete a function, since most functions are multi-faceted.

It is not scientifically true that if you are artistic, you are basically trapped in the right hemisphere of your brain and thus you are hopeless in articulating your artistic ideas because of your under developed (neuronal speaking) left side of the brain. It has been postulated that if you cannot do maths you tend to study humanities and if you cannot articulate your feelings you tend to deal with images. These hypotheses have never been scientifically tested - they are therefore unsubstantiated notions.

My university students, when confronted with writing an essay about art, are always quick to point to such myths. When they do, I am quick to point to one of my favourite books – “Writing About Art” by Henry M. Sayre[2]. I also give my students a comprehensive list of art-bloggers who can easily publish lucid conversational essays about their own art, unravelling techniques, and ideas and giving valuable insights into their art practice. They readily use their right and left side of brain interchangeably, imperceptibly and instantaneously.

Artists such as Piet Mondrian (e.g. Painting I, 1926) and Jackson Pollack (Number 1 1948, 1948) have deliberately labelled some of their artworks with titles that were devoid of any subject matter. In Pollack’s case he wanted the “doing” of the painting and the outcome of its “doing” to stand paramount during the act of engagement and so not to be obscured or distracted by a title, which may mislead or obviate the central purpose of the act – to “experience” the work unfettered[2]. Some of the ArtCloth titles on this blog have been deliberately named - “Untitled” - perhaps for similar reasons (see earlier posts).

Piet Mondrian, Painting I, Oil Painting (1926).

All artworks generate their own mien – some are modified by the ambience in which they reside, whereas others distort or even warp the environment that they are located in by their mere presence. As a curator, I am always aware of how the artwork interacted with the space allocated to it and its surrounds (see Engaging New Visions on this blog site). As an artist, I am aware about how my artwork should be presented, even though in “group” exhibitions I may not have a say about its surrounds.

Jackson Pollack, Number 1 1948, Oil Painting (1948).

My trait is that all of my artworks are titled - and I choose my titles very carefully - to inform the viewer of the subject matter of the artworks; that is, my title is a just another clue. However, rarely can it capture the “experience” generated by the work, because often such intricate interactions are somewhat plastic, varying with each viewer’s interpretation and my over-arching intent as an artist - to create an “experience” during the act of engagement. As I have often stated on this blog site, art is an ill defined communication system, albeit intentional by design; it cannot be precise; it is therefore vague in delivery and so may surprisingly generate unexpected constructive or destructive criticisms and/or analysis. See the following blog for some unexpected comments by art critics.

When I exhibit my artwork, I make sure it is properly labelled (Name, Title, Year It was Created, Medium, Size etc.) and depending on the curator, I would normally follow this label with a brief description of my “intent” in creating my artwork; that is, the intended “experience” that I wanted to create during the act of engagement. The latter is usually less than 100 words in length. Nevertheless, I have participated in exhibitions where such statements were shunned. In a solo exhibition, I always leave a pamphlet giving a readable bibliography and shortened version of my curriculum vitae. Hopefully, most of the above material will be in a catalogue, together with reproductions of my artwork. All of these informative tools are mere aids to assist in understanding my artwork. For example, below is the sort of information I would deliver with an exhibited artwork, albeit that is much longer than what I would normally pen.

Synopsis Of ArtWork: Whose Church?As the Catholic Church grew from a seed into a worldwide conglomerate, the Vatican amassed enormous protected material wealth. It did so via capitalism. Even today, it operates its business ventures outside of the constructs of the Church on capitalistic grounds. In 1973, a Peruvian Jesuit Father Gustavo Gutierrez published a book entitled “A Theology of Liberation”. The tenets of what became known as liberation theology rested on freeing the people from political oppression, economic want and misery here on earth. More specifically still, it was freeing the people in Latin America from political domination by capitalism. The underlying assumption was the preferential option that Jesus showed for the poor. Was it not easy for a camel to slip through the tiny eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? After all, was not Christ himself poor – “…the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, while even the birds of the air have nests and the foxes have their lairs”.

This print juxtaposes the material wealth of the Church derived from capitalism with its spiritual wealth (e.g. Saint Francis of Assisi and the cross of Jesus) and so directly raises the dichotomy, which challenged the liberation theologians – Whose Church?

Information Overload?So where is the mystery in this print if all information about it has been delivered to the viewer? When I created – “Whose Church?” – my intention was to artistically investigate the dichotomy between theory and practice of the Roman Catholic Church. Using deductive reasoning, I settled on a particular theme (e.g. liberation theology) to give my work a compositional uniformity. For a viewer, the unfettered individual “experience” during the act of engagement may have settled on more recent problems of the Church, namely, the sexual abuse by Priests of minors and so the "experience" might have been framed in terms of – Is it the Church of Jesus, or is the Church permanently anchored to the human frailties of its minders - the priests and nuns? (Inductive reasoning). The artist statement informs rather than captures or contextualises the entire array of possible unfettered “experience(s)” felt by the viewer(s).

I should point out that reproductions in a catalogue or on your computer screen do not slavishly follow the color of the artworks, nor do they give you a feel for their size, complexity or yield information about the art marks (fine, rough, smooth or textured etc.) Hence, care must always be taken to “see” the work in situ (if possible) before writing about it.

Replica of the Mona Lisa recently discovered at the Madrid's Museo del Prado. Conservators say that it was painted at the same time as the original — and possibly by one of the master's pupils, or perhaps even by a lover.

Lastly, I never describe formal elements in my work such as lines, space, shape, light and dark, color, rhythm, repetition, proportion, balance, scale, unity, values, variety or more unique elements such as the use of foils, gold leaf etc. or even make comparative studies [2] I might do so when I am delivering a talk about my artwork to an audience, where I may wish to expand on technical aspects that underwrote the intended “experience” and moreover, place in context my artwork in terms of my overall output, my influences and the artwork of others. Generally, I leave these topics to the critics, who may wish to write about my art. After all, there needs to be some mists in what I do!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

IntroductionWhen I read Sir Thomas More's (also known as Saint Thomas More) – Utopia – in the 1960s, I felt he strove for the intersection between fact and fantasy (that later became the hallmark of science fiction writers and more recently of espionage writers such as Frederick Forsyth). More’s Utopia tried to reform the human spirit in an age and place where religiosity was driven towards the mundane (e.g. Henry VIII dumped the Roman Catholic Church in order to divorce Catherine of Aragon, and More in 1535 refusing to take an oath impugning the pope’s authority was then beheaded).

Illustration For The 1516 First Edition Of Utopia.

An area that is 230 kilometers North-East of Alice Springs (Australia) is also called Utopia. The area was named Utopia by early pastoralists in the 1920s since rabbits there were so numerous and tame that they could be caught by hand. Utopia's Indigenous place names — Alhalpere, Rreltye, Thelye, Atarrkete and Ingutanka — are also the particular names of families who are custodians for these aboriginal “counties”. There are approximately 880 to 1000 people who live in some 16 small camps dotted across an area of 2000 square kilometers. The community is structured on extended family groups whose camps are generally centered on their clan lands. There are about 120 working artists in the community.

Geographical position of the Utopia region (Australia).

In 2007 the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, in response to child sexual abuse and neglect of Northern Territorial Aboriginals, legislated in law - The Northern Territory National Emergency Response (also referred to as "the intervention"). The response has been severely criticized by aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups but has received bipartisan parliamentary support. The current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard continues to support the response, though her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, did make some adjustments to its implementation.

One of the measures that the current government agencies are actively pursuing is to remove these disperse camps and settlements into a more concentrated “village” society, where resources (such as health, education, social services etc.) can be more easily administrated and delivered. The “Utopian” aboriginals are currently resisting this move, since they consider their immediate connection to their land and its intimate features are more spiritually important than a “white” notion of a village society.

No matter what the reason behind Utopia's original naming, it was nevertheless aptly named; the aboriginal artists spread throughout this region are undergoing a reaffirmation of their kindred spirit via their new found art media and in doing so, they are (in keeping with More's vision) arriving at the intersection of their earthly/geographical reality and their non-earthly/indigenous spirituality.

Utopian Aboriginal ArtClothUtopia was the name of a pastoral lease taken out on the area in 1927. This lease resulted in the traditional areas being depopulated as local aboriginal people moved to homestead encampments to find work. In 1977, the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission acquired the lease on behalf of the Utopia community and in 1979 the land was returned to them under inalienable freehold title.

In 1977 a batik program was started in Utopia as a source of income for the women. The majority of the artists creating these batik designs were women painting Dreamtime stories of bush tucker and women’s ceremonies. In the preparation for the land claim this direct connection between art and land helped to provide the supportive evidence needed for the Utopia community to lodge their successful land-rights claim. Throughout the hearings the women of Utopia displayed their batiks to demonstrate the economic viability of the outstations, and also as an expression of their Dreaming rights and responsibilities to the country.

The National Gallery of Victoria has the largest collection of Aboriginal ArtCloth in Australia. Below are examples of the Batik ArtCloth of the women artists of Utopia.

IntroductionThere are three basic ingredients (as opposed to definitions) that all artworks possess; (i) they need to be “engaged”; (ii) they are non-functional, and (iii) they are aesthetic. Wearable Art is “Art” when placed in an art context but when it is not placed in an art context, its functionality obscures the act of engagement. My scarves are wearable art.

My scarves have been created using a range of fabrics and various hand dyeing and hand printing techniques. They are a one-off creation, never to be repeated in color, tone or overall design. However, some of the design elements may re-appear in other scarves, but the overall colors and design is what ensures their uniqueness.

What I do not do is sew, even though my mother (Milla Wisniowski) created fashion-wear for the Melbourne (Australia) fashion industry. I figured that one sewer/designer of clothes in the family was more than enough. I have her to thank for all the scarves that required stitching (see below).

My scarves are available in various galleries, art and craft outlets throughout Australia. For example, in the Hunter Valley Vineyards (Australia) they are available from Butterflies Gallery.

Published in Studio La Primitive Arts Zine

Marie-Therese was invited by the editor of Studio La Primitive Arts Zine, Robyn Werkhoven, to be a 'Feature Artist' in the Arts Zine which features articles and interviews with national and international visual artists, poets and writers and glimpses into their world of art and their creative processes. The article, which features Marie-Therese’s art practice and career is titled, ' A Mapping of Anthropogenic Change' has been published in the May 2018 Issue 25 of the Studio La Primitive Arts Zine (the article appears on page 86). Click on the Image to get to the article.

2018 CrossXpollinatioN Exhibition - Journey's

Marie-Therese has been invited to be a 'Feature Artist' at the '2018 CrossXpollinatioN' exhibition which is themed 'Journey's'. Her ArtCloth Installation 'Timelines: An Environmental Journey' will be exhibited at the Colac Otway Performing Arts & Cultural Centre, Colac, Victoria from the 7th - 29th July 2018. The installation will feature works employing her signature MultiSperse Dye Sublimation (MSDS) technique on synthetic fibres.Click on the image to see how the Gondwana II was created.

Art Quill Studio @ Sydney Craft & Quilt Fair.

2018 Sydney Craft & Quilt Fair at the International Convention Centre, Sydney, from the 20th – 24th June.Art Quill Studio can be found at stand no. G29_LP1 where my unique and contemporary hand dyed, hand painted and hand printed ArtCloth fabric lengths, fat quarters, fabric samplers and scarves will be available as well as my one-off/limited edition digitally designed ArtCloth fabric lengths.Click on the image to view some of my fabric lengths and the techniques used to make them.

I have uploaded a new Glossary on my blogspot.The Glossary of Paper, Photography, Printing, Prints and Publication Terms is highly focused, containing definitions and terms pertinent to the specific categories in the title. Click on the image to access it!

About Me

I work full time as a studio artist, researcher, author, curator, speaker and tutor. I am also the Director of Art Quill Studio, The Education Division of Art Quill & Co. Pty. Ltd. at Arcadia Vale, NSW, Australia. I teach as a casual lecturer at The University of Newcastle (Australia) and I am the former co-editor of Textile Fibre Forum art magazine.

Employing my signature techniques I specialize in the area of ArtCloth, artist printmaker books and limited edition prints.

Followers

My Most Visited Posts"When Rainforests Ruled" - ArtCloth Exhibition

My Scarves @ The Australian Craft Awards

My unique, hand dyed and printed silk rayon velvet and pashmina scarves are available for purchase. To purchase a scarf please contact - studio@artquill.com.au.Click on the image above to see my velvet ArtCloth scarves.

Welcome to Art Quill Studio

Art Quill Studio is a trademark of Art Quill & Co P/L, which is an Australian Company with no subsidiaries outside of Australia.

This blog will be dedicated to arousing world wide interest in: (a) using the medium of cloth to create a work of art; (b) promoting works on paper; (c) exploring concepts that are the basis of my current artworks; (d) offering opinions on art issues; (e) providing art resources to the public at large.